New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
I'm so excited that my book is coming out with Llwellyn this summer! Spinstress Craft: Magick for the Independent Witch rips the stitches out of the nasty old stereotype of the "spinster." Like reclaiming the word "witch," this is meant to take back the power owed to strong and independent womxyn. Yes, womxyn. This book welcomes all who choose to identify with the pages and ideas within. The alternate spelling of the word is meant to make room for an alternate definition. A more inclusive one. A "spinster" was a professional person back before the hype. Like "miller" or "carpenter," it's a job. A spinster was someone who worked a spinning wheel, turning fibers (usually wool) into thread ...
"Though Shakespeare never wielded a wand, nor thought of himself as a magus, he is a magician, master of the spell-binding use of words, of poetry as magic."—Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age Shakespeare was writing at a liminal point in history, where the Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age met the dawning of the age of science and rationalism in the Jacobean era. However, while his contemporaries were either portraying magic and alchemy as something to be feared or mocked (or both), Shakespeare continued to weave a thread of true magic through his work, with his late plays (The Winter's Tale, Pericles, Cymbeline, and The Tempest) being amongst the ...
I'm a writer. I'm a psychic astrologer, too, and tarot card reader, but that stuff, the metaphysical work, came later, much later, in my life. And not long ago, when I noticed that Saturn, planet of restriction and limitation, was readying himself to enter a certain part of my birth chart having to do with routine and daily life, I had a feeling. I had a feeling that my writing (along with other daily life habits), was about to take a hit. I had to get ready. I had to make a plan. Dear Reader, here's the whole truth and nothing but: I did not make a plan. I saw the transit coming from a mile away. (A transit is where a planet is now, in the sky, and how it might affect you.) I wasn't ...
I fell in love with Wiccan-Witchcraft because of the Goddess. I saw her face in the moon, the green earth, and the green waters of the Mississippi River that flowed just a few blocks from my house. When engaged in ritual it was the Goddess I called to, and when I read Witchcraft books I did so in order to draw closer to her. When those books mentioned the Horned God I simply scanned the page, hoping to escape from the horned nightmare in front of my eyes. I mostly grew up in the American South, and had been active in the Christian Church during my teenage years. By the time I turned twenty-one and had mostly embraced Witchcraft I had begun to realize just how wrong many Christian ...
